Jagged Wound
by Tiniwiel
Summary: Written for a prompt from my Tumblr: "Bones/Chekov: Serious injury and the resulting hurt/comfort." Chekov is injured after what was supposed to be a routine mission. Bones struggles with cleaning up the consequences. Includes spoilers for Star Trek: Into Darkness and it follows that movie by a few months.


I wrote this in July in response to a prompt from my Tumblr: "Bones/Chekov: Serious injury and the resulting hurt/comfort."

This kind of has major spoilers for Star Trek: Into Darkness. I don't think there's anything specific, but it might make a little more sense if you've see the movie. So up to your own discretion, really. Also, some descriptions of blood.

Not beta'd, so please excuse any mistakes.

Also, my medical knowledge comes from a quick Google search and watching M*A*S*H

* * *

It was supposed to be a simple mission; that in itself should have told Leonard everything was going to go to Hell. A small crew flew down to the planet to meet with the higher ranking natives, have a small discussion basically verifying to each other's existence, fly back to the Enterprise and be on their way. Kirk, Uhura, Spock and Pavel had gone though Leonard had voiced some very strong opinions against letting the youngest member of the bridge crew, and his lover of one year, go.

But his objections were ignored and the four flew to the planet. For hours the connection planet side remained quiet until suddenly mayhem broke out and both sides fired shots. Chaos and shouts reigned the comlink before a panicked Uhura screamed to beam them up.

Now Pavel was lying, stomach bleeding profusely, on Leonard's table. The younger man moaned in pain, Leonard torn between wanting to comfort him and fixing the wound. He had pleaded with Jim, threatened his life if he let Pavel go down there because he knew something like this would happen. He had begged with the Russian, but Pavel had simply smiled and insisted everything would be fine.

That smiled meant to reassure him hours ago was nowhere to be found in the grimace on Pavel's lips, his jaw tight as he fought against the pain. His lithe hands, used to floating across the panels of the ship's navigational system, were now slippery with blood as he tried to slow the red liquid seeping from beneath his goldenrod shirt.

Somehow Leonard's hands found Pavel's in the deep crimson pool gathering around the jagged wound in the ensign's midsection; his hands gripped the younger man's tightly, both helping staunch the blood and ignoring the tremors in the doctor's fingers.

_You'll be okay, please be okay, someone make him okay._

"Bones." Jim's voice cut through Leonard's frantic thoughts and reluctantly he looked up at his captain. The grim yet slightly frightened look on his best friend's face brought reality crashing back. Suddenly Leonard saw the rest of the landing crew and his own doctors and nurses staring helplessly, pity on their faces as Pavel's pained groans and pleas echoed through the otherwise empty medical bay.

"Make the pain stop," Pavel muttered in Russian. "Please Leonard, help me."

"It will be fine," he answered in his own halting attempt at the language. Pavel had been teaching him, laughing from a cozy perch in Leonard's arms at the older man's terrible pronunciation. "I'm here." All it took was another frightened whisper from Pavel for the doctor to leap into action.

He lifted his, and with greater difficulty Pavel's, hands from the wound to see it grinning a gruesome red up at him.

"Belly wound," he ground out. "Inconclusive internal damage," he added even as he brought up the scan results of Pavel's body. He ignored the bright red smears his fingers left on the screen. "I need an operating table prepped and I need him put under. Now!" He barked when no one moved; the sharp syllable snapped nurses into action as they scurried to gather the necessary surgical equipment and a lower ranking doctor administered a powerful hypospray under Leonard's careful eye.

"Now," he rounded on Kirk while as he headed toward the operating area and scrubbed his hands clean with a towel. "Tell me exactly what happened down there."

A spear, Leonard thought to himself hours later as he watched Pavel sleep. A goddamn spear, roughly made from rock and a tree limb. No one was quite sure what set one of the guards off, but the doctor bet it was either something Jim did or something Spock said. Any assumption of a misstep from Jim, accidental or not, came from years of experience. And though often (infuriatingly) right, their senior science officer didn't understand yet when logic was considered socially unacceptable.

Either way, the guard obviously perceived some notion of danger and thrust his spear at the supposed weak link: the youngest. The jagged edges of the rock spearhead tore through Pavel's flesh, nicking an artery but thankfully, luckily, missed anything else life threatening.

Leonard rubbed at the grit in his eyes, a result of hours without sleeping. The surgery had gone well, Leonard managed to sew up the bleeder rather quickly, but Pavel had yet to wake up. The body took time to heal, he'd known that since practically his first day as a med student, but all the doctor could do was fear he missed something and this man he had just begun to love was dying before his eyes.

It had all started after the attack on San Fransisco by the man known as John Harrison. Just weeks into the cleanup effort, Leonard had found Pavel in a seedy bar much better suited to Jim's tastes than the young ensign. Even now he could remember the haunted look in the younger man's face, scarred with tears and exhaustion. With another glass of alcohol and few gentle words, Leonard had managed to coax story out.

When the ship had finally righted itself, after Jim had made what everyone thought was a final sacrifice, the bodies of crewmember stuck on various railings in engineering began to fall. Pavel watched helplessly as men and women he barely knew flew through the air and landed with sickening thuds.

He also apparently still suffered from night terrors of Amanda Grayson's death. It was a wonder Pavel had slept at all since boarding the Enterprise.

That night Leonard drug the young man out of the bar and back to Leonard's own quarters in one of the few buildings still standing in the city. What started out as almost paternal concern grew into a deeper connection; one forged by surviving almost two years on the Enterprise. Then, on the day of the memorial service, Leonard realized he was in love. He had looked up from buttoning his gray uniform jacket and his breath caught at the sight of Pavel, framed by the sunlight streaming through the window as he struggled with his own buttons. Leonard knew in that moment he couldn't have any more days without him at his side.

"Pavel," he had whispered almost reverently. The younger man had looked up questioningly but must have seen the revelation on Leonard's face because he had grinned and crossed the few steps to stand in front of the doctor and continued smiling as Leonard pressed a soft kiss against his lips.

Those same lips now looked pale and lifeless, like the rest of Pavel as he lay unmoving under the stark white sheet of his recovery bed.

"Bones." For the second time in the past 48 hours Jim's voice shook Leonard from his own thoughts. The older man looked up to see the captain, eyes framed by dark circles of exhaustion, staring at him with an unreadable expression.

"Go get some sleep," Jim said softly. "I'll stay here with him."

"I can't-" Leonard's voice was rough and dry from a combination of shouting orders and the hours of sitting in the silence of the recovery ward. He swallowed heavily around the lump of unshed tears in his throat. "I can't leave him."

Jim sat in the chair across the bed that, so far, both Sulu and Uhura had previously occupied. "Bones," he said again, gently. "You and I both know you have a cot packed up in your office. At least go sleep on that for as long as you can." He glanced over Pavel's sleeping form, guilt flickering across his face.

"It wasn't your fault," Leonard said, contradicting his previous thoughts and reading Jim's perfectly.

Jim's eyes never met his. "We both know it was." The heavy sigh of a captain escaped the younger man as he settled back into the uncomfortable chair. "Sleep, Bones. I'll let you know if anything changes."

Recognizing defeat, the doctor went to his office, pulling out the cot from his camping days on Earth and contorting himself onto the stiff material and metal legs of the cot.

Leonard hadn't dreamt, exactly, more like the events of the past two days had seeped into his sleeping mind: flashes of Pavel's face contorted in pain and blood flowing everywhere. He woke with a start, legs cramped from the taut strain of attempting to stay on the makeshift bed.

Heart racing, he took in his surroundings: the med bay was still quiet and from here he could see Pavel's still figure on the bed and Jim, slumped in the chair beside it; both images distorted by the doors of glass between them.

Slowly he made his way through the slightly dark emergency area, lights dimmed to simulate night. The doors hissed quietly as he passed through them and he sat down in his chair next to Pavel's bed quietly as not to wake his sleeping best friend.

The young man laid still, too still and fear clawed up Leonard's spine as he rested a hand over Pavel's _._

"Come on kid," he whispered. "Wake up." He sighed as Pavel refused to respond beyond the regular flicker of his eyelids. "I need you, Pavel." Still no response. "The first time I saw you, you were so…alive." His mouth stuttered around the word, such a contrast to the still form before him. "Please come back."

"He's going to be fine, Bones." Jim's voice sounded rough from sleep or tears, Leonard didn't want to know which and his eyes remained focused on the sheet covering Pavel's body.

"Of course he is," Leonard replied gruffly, not giving in to the instinct to drop the younger man's hand. "I'm his doctor dammit, I fixed him."

"Yeah," the captain answered as he stood, "but he's not just your patient."

"I know that too," he admitted softly, still watching the young man who somehow made his way through Leonard's tough exterior. Leonard squeezed his hand, waiting for the miraculous flutter of dark eyelashes and the sight of grey eyes, but was only met with stillness and silence.

"Jim, I don't know what I'll do if he doesn't-"

"He will," Jim said firmly, almost harshly as he leaned onto the bed, the movement causing Leonard to meet the captain's gaze. "This is the same kid-man," he corrected himself, "who figured out a way to get us to Nero's ship without detection, who saved hundreds of lives keeping a ship flying much longer than it should have and who saved me and Scotty from falling to our death." He gave a small, reassuring and confident smile. "If anyone is going to come out of this it's him. If anyone deserves to survive, it's him."

With a small nod Jim left the med bay, leaving the doctor alone with the man who was, as Jim correctly put, so much more than his patient. Surrounded again by the silence of the dim med bay, Leonard stared at the unconscious ensign, mind racing with the fear of a lonely future; a future he wasn't sure he could survive. The muted blues and reds of the medical bay were meant to be soothing, calming; in this moment they made vast room feel like a tomb.

Leonard gently took the hand in his with both of his hands and rested his forehead on the bed next to Pavel's leg.

"Wake up," he chanted, a prayer in all but name. "Please wake up. I need you. Don't leave."

The hand clasped between his fluttered.


End file.
